


The Successor

by Traxits



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Creepy, Dubious Consent, F/F, Missing Scene, Obsession, Unresolved Sexual Tension, time compression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7760302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traxits/pseuds/Traxits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's never known a life without the weight of Ultimecia's eyes on her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Successor

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who's curious, I wrote the whole fic to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5m6_Zwj5c) on repeat.

Uncle Laguna held her hand too tightly. It hurt, felt as though her bones might snap as he tugged her along behind him. It was everything she could do just to keep up with him, and not for the first time, she was grateful for the sneakers. Had Ellone been wearing any other kind of shoe, she probably would have fallen, and she was fairly sure that she was too big for Uncle Laguna to pick up these days.

It was ridiculous to even be running, but she didn’t know how to explain that to Uncle Laguna. Not when he was holding onto her so tightly. There was no outrunning Time Compression, nowhere that they could go, and she could feel the moments bleeding into each other already. If she let go of her grip on the present, she could hear Adel and Ultimecia. She could feel the magic surging through her, burning corners of her mind that she’d never been so aware of, as Ultimecia cast spell after spell, layering them until their brightness threatened to take Ellone’s sight completely.

She jerked on Uncle Laguna’s hand, pulling him to a stop. Her sides ached, and she let go of her focus on the past to look up at him.

Everything was too dark without that incredible brightness, and she could barely make out his face as he stepped in close to her, his hand coming up to brush over her hair.

She felt the tears spilling down her face as she pushed in against him, burying her face against his chest. "Winhill," she whispered. "If we…"

"No, Elle–"

" _Winhill._ " She shook her head. "I love you," she said.

She tried to say.

But the moments were shifting too quickly, were flattening out and stretching, bubbling up and bursting, and as she pressed harder against him, Ellone fell.

She fell forward, she crashed into the ground, and she rubbed at her own eyes before she reached blindly around, trying to find–

Her breath hitched as she felt fabric under her fingertips.

"Ellone... The Ellone."

A hand tangled in her hair and wrenched Ellone's head back. Ellone blinked, her lips parting as she gasped, as she tried to focus beyond all of the moments she could see. Past, present, and future, all happening, all of it _connected_ to her, through her.

She couldn't make sense of any of it, but at the same time, she'd never been more aware of her own power. This was what it wanted to do, this was how time existed in her head. She'd never known that it could exist this way anywhere else.

(But then, it couldn't, could it?)

She blinked again, focusing on the now, on the pressure of that hand in her hair, on the too-tight grip holding her. She could only make out golden eyes, but that was enough. She knew those eyes.

"The Sorceress Ultimecia," she breathed, and those fingers clenched in her hair.

"The Elusive Ellone," Ultimecia echoed. "And here you are finally, on your knees before me." Ellone could hear the way Ultimecia's breathing hitched, stuck in her throat.

Ellone knew the feeling. It was almost a relief to look at her now, to see the sorceress who had chased her for so long.

(It's ridiculous, but Ellone doesn't know what life is without Ultimecia's shadow over it. Without her eyes appearing behind every sorceress Ellone meets, without that broken and raspy, "Ellone," breaking from the lips of the woman around her just when Ellone thinks she's safe. Ultimecia has been a part of her life longer than anyone else has.)

"This is where you belong, foolish girl," Ultimecia breathed, and Ellone looked up again. The corners of her mouth tightened, and she pushed herself up to her feet. She didn't have to see past the moments in her eyes to do that much. Ultimecia's grip tightened, but Ellone didn't stop.

She was shorter than Ultimecia, but that didn't surprise her. She only tilted her head back to hold Ultimecia's golden gaze. So achingly familiar.

Haunting.

"You will chase me our whole lives," Ellone said, and she reached up to wrap her hand around Ultimecia's wrist. Ultimecia's eyes narrowed, and she let go of Ellone's hair rather than let Ellone touch her. Ellone couldn't help the soft, almost choked laugh that escaped her. "Aren't you tired of it?"

"Tired of winning? Never." Ultimecia tilted her head back, looking up at the ceiling, and Ellone twisted to follow her gaze. She could see a window there, and the blackness they stood in made the stained glass gleam.

Dust fell in front of it, twisting and glittering in the light, and Ellone gasped faintly as she realized that it wasn't dust at all. It was moments, disjointed and free, floating with no hand to guide them, no memories to support them.

"You can't change the past," Ellone breathed, and she watched those moments drift down past the window, swirling around the floor that wasn't a floor as though there was wind to blow them. She looked back at Ultimecia. "I would know."

Ultimecia raised an eyebrow at her, and one corner of her mouth lifted. Small smile but supremely self-satisfied. Confident.

"I already have, girl." Ultimecia's smile widened, broke into a gleam of teeth. Ellone couldn't breathe under the force of it, and Ultimecia wasn't even looking at her. She was still watching the time drifting by. "Look around you—"

"You've changed nothing," Ellone said, and she pressed a hand against her chest as she threw her other arm out. Her scarf slipped a little ways down, but she didn't drop it. "This has all already happened!" Her voice cracked, and she swallowed, her lips pressing together as she glanced down to the floor. The dust glistened in the light, beginning to swirl around her feet. It was the same color yellow as her sneakers.

Her eyes closed, and she could feel heat behind them. Tears.

(When was the last time she'd let herself cry? And now she couldn't seem to stop.)

"You know how this ends," she whispered.

"Fate," Ultimecia spat, and her gaze slid down to Ellone again. Ellone could feel it. She knew the weight of that look better than any other. "Fate will be denied. All existence will be denied. The only thing that kan survive Time Kompression is me—"

"And me," Ellone said, and she opened her eyes. She sucked in a breath, and she reached up to rub the heel of her palm against her face. "I'm the bridge. I'm the only reason you can compress anything."

"Do you think you kan survive it?" Ultimecia's voice is low. Soft. Raspier than Ellone would have honestly expected. There's gravel in her voice, a thousand sharp edges to cut herself on. "Do you think you, little girl, are strong enough when not even those SeeDs kan manage it?"

Ellone laughed, and it was brittle. Dry. It choked her as it escaped her.

"I've destroyed everything I've ever loved to get away from you. Do you really think that I'd let you win? Those SeeDs are coming, Ultimecia. And when they do, we'll see who can survive it, won't we?"

"You have no idea what you have destroyed for me," Ultimecia said, and she stepped in then, so close to Ellone that Ellone could feel breath against the side of her face. "You are as much a monster as I am. More, for that the world didn't remember you as one." Ultimecia smiled again, and this one wasn't any warmer than the previous one. "Not even after Odine's report was published."

Ellone's mouth tightened. "It won't matter what Odine's report will say," she breathed.

"But it did matter to you. It shattered you, girl. It was the beginning of your end."

Ellone's gaze flicked up, her eyes narrowing. "... Is that the moment you will pick? To come to me for the first time?"

"You kan see it, kan't you? Flashing before your eyes?" Ultimecia's voice lowered, and Ellone shuddered. "You kan feel all those moments slipping away, bleeding into each other, kan't you? I have chased you so far back through time, I know what that look is on your face—"

"Why come for me when I was a child?" Ellone blurted, grasping at the only moment that mattered. The first time she'd felt the weight of those golden eyes behind Adel's, the first time that hand had stretched out to her.

(The successor, they'd called her. The successor to the Sorceress Adel. 'Destroyer of the World,' was what they'd meant.)

"My powers weren't strong enough for what you needed. They weren't going to help you yet. Why come for me then?" Ellone reached out, and her fingers brushed against that long white hair that fell between them. Ultimecia's smile faded, and Ellone's eyes narrowed. "Was it because you—?"

"—killed you—"

"—will kill me?"

The words were spoken at the same time. They were spoken a lifetime apart. Here, in this room, it didn't matter because those two moments were one. This dance they were locked in was generations apart, but it was the only thing they knew. The only thing that mattered.

The thread between them was the one on which the world hung. Ellone could feel it. If either of them had stepped even slightly differently, their timeline would be gone, and everything would have vanished. The pressure of fate, of destiny, of whatever anyone wanted to call it was unbearable. It had destroyed her.

(Liberi Fatali. That's what the papers will call them. That's what the history books will note them as. But not her, not Ellone, no matter how much she feels the pressure. She's the one who doesn't exist. She's the forgotten object of a crusade that threatened to consume the world. Liberi Fatali.)

It forged her.

"You won't change anything," Ellone said, and her voice didn't crack that time. "You can't. We have already done this before—"

"And we will do it, again and again, thanks to the world you have left me in," Ultimecia replied. Her hand lifted to brush fingers— claws— against Ellone's face, against her hair. She pressed too hard and broke the skin, scratched her.

Ellone could feel the blood trailing down her face, but she didn't pull back. She'd been running her whole life. She would spend the rest of her life running as well. But at this moment, Uncle Laguna needed her to be strong. He needed her to stand here, needed her to be made from the same stuff he was. And the stuff he was made from never gave up, no matter how impossible, no matter how frightened he was.

"That's your world." Ellone could feel that pressure building. She could feel it when the air around them changed. A door opened somewhere, and Ultimecia's head lifted to look up at the stained glass once more. Ellone closed her eyes, her hand falling from Ultimecia's hair to her own side.

It clenched into a fist as she forced down the connection. She didn't sever it. She couldn't. Time compressing around them was too far for her to stop completely. But she could slow it down. She could throttle the amount of connection that Ultimecia had with Adel in the past.

Ultimecia's eyes widened, and Ellone dropped down as Ultimecia lashed at her. Claws narrowly missed the top of her head, and she looked up at Ultimecia from the floor. A laugh escaped her, tears still on her face, watering down the blood there.

"That's your world," Ellone repeated. "Not mine."

She could feel the fury under Ultimecia's skin, could see it all over her, and Ultimecia started to reach for her only to stop part way.

They could both feel the presence of the others in the castle. Coming for them. For Ultimecia, because there was no way they knew Ellone was even there.

"They kan't save you."

Ellone smiled.

"I never asked them to."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Ellone on the floor and Ultimecia standing over her. It could have been a second. It could have been a day. Time had no meaning anymore. It never had between the two of them. Time was only an eternal illusion that they had traversed together, willingly or not. They had fashioned each other.

Between the two of them, they had destroyed the world in their attempts to defy fate.

Between the two of them, they would destroy far more than simply the world.

The successor, they'd called her. They'd had no idea how much of Adel's legacy of destruction Ellone bore.

"You kannot stop me. It is too far gone. Resisting me now—"

"Buys time," Ellone whispered. "And trust me, if there's one thing I know how to do, it's buying time. You'll have to face the SeeDs now, and we both know they're here to kill you."

"You kannot eskape me—"

"You'll kill me one day. I know. But I'll die knowing that I was the death of you, too."

Ultimecia's hand tangled in her hair again, but Ellone was ready for it. When Ultimecia wrenched her up, Ellone moved with her. Ultimecia's lips twisted into another snarl, furious at being denied.

She always was, though.

(They could both hear the footfalls of the SeeDs in the castle. They could hear the murmuring as they discussed tactics. Time. Memories. Time had stopped. Time was running out. This moment couldn't exist, and every moment had to end eventually.)

"I will destroy them, Ellone," Ultimecia murmured, and she leaned in close. Ellone couldn't look away from her. There was nothing but her in the room, her and the golden motes of time swirling around them. "I will send them to a dimension where they can feel nothing. Where they are nothing."

Her lips brushed against Ellone's.

"And when I am through with them, I will return for you. I will rip your thoughts apart and konsume all of your memories."

She bit Ellone's mouth in something that couldn't be called a kiss, and Ellone jerked even though there was nowhere for her to go.

"Until all that's left is a husk," she murmured against Ellone's mouth.

Ellone could taste the blood. It was a promise.

One they both knew Ultimecia could never deliver.


End file.
